Summary: As the processor community prepares
for a billion transistors on a chip,
researchers continue to debate the
most effective way to use them. One
approach is to add more memory (either
cache or primary memory) to the chip, but
the performance gain from memory alone is
limited. Another approach is to increase the
level of systems integration, bringing sup-
port functions like graphics accelerators and
I/O controllers on chip. Although integra-
tion lowers system costs and communica-
tion latency, the overall performance gain to
applications is again marginal.
We believe the only way to significantly
improve performance is to enhance the
processor's computational capabilities. In
general, this means increasing parallelism--
in all its available forms. At present only cer-
tain forms of parallelism are being exploited.

Source: Anderson, Richard - Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington at Seattle

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences